During these tough economic times, budgeting is becoming an even more critical aspect of the planning process.  It's easy for many companies to immediately dismiss marketing as a disposable expense, however, research shows that companies which continue to market during an economic downturn are that much farther ahead of those that don't. We consult with many clients regarding their annual online marketing strategies and plans.  Here are some tips to consider to get your 2009 Online Marketing budget approved. 1. Outline expected results Your goal is to link marketing initiatives and strategies to financial outcomes, therefore you need to make sure you can effectively show how investing in online marketing will result in specific goals and objectives. For example, your marketing initiatives may include one or more of the following:
  • Drive incremental sales. Show how your online marketing plan will directly impact sales. Your outcomes are pretty straightforward if your marketing directly generates sales. Tactics may include Paid Search, search engine optimization, online media buying, and email marketing.
  • Drive leads into the sales pipeline. Show how you will engage your online audience and generate interest and demand that results in generating a lead.  Tactics may include Paid Search, search engine optimization, online media buying, and email marketing.
  • Engage and convert more visitors.Show how you will engage more visitors and get them to respond to your offer.  Small lift in conversion rates can easily multiply sales.  Tactics may include web effectiveness and multivariate testing.
  • Interact with your audience.Show how you will engage your audience where they spend time online today.  Buzz and referrals can be powerful and result in customer evaluation and adoption.   Tactics may include web analytics, multivariate testing, and social media.
  • Building your brand. Show how exposing your brand will result in greater recognition and adoption resulting in greater engagement and ultimately sales.  Granted, this is a longer term approach that requires more buy-in.  Tactics may include paid search, online media buying, and social media.
To project your expected outcomes, quantify the results you have achieved prior and make sound assumptions. This gives more weight to your strategy, shows sound thinking, and often creates a positive collaborative dialog. 2. Educate decision makers on the dynamics of the strategy. The next step and one of the most critical is getting buy-in and approval from the powers that be.  Educating your executives on the core strategy to the point that they are nodding their heads in agreement is important.  Identifying any threats to the strategy and plan should be highlighted, but not magnified. It is important to reinforce with the decision makers the following:
  • Integrated plan with critical mass. Show how complementary tactics yield even better results.  For example, how search marketing and online media combined yields higher returns when integrated successfully.
  • Marketing needs to be supported through the entire funnel. If there are other dependencies to driving sales, ensure that those parts of the funnel are held accountable to their target conversion rates.
  • Budgeting for analytics is critical to measuring and delivering expected outcomes. Without a unified measurement tool, showing expected outcomes will be challenging.  Ensure you have an analytics platform that captures leading KPIs along with bottom-line conversions.  For example, your web analytics platform should be able to tell you how a opt-in email marketing campaign directly impacts sales on the website.
  • A testing budget that allows for new champions to surface. We recommend setting aside around 10% of your budget if possible to test new hypothesis and in some cases emerging tactics.
If asked how to reduce the overall budget, suggest that the decision makers take more budget and wipe out the integrated approach because it may not be effective enough to make a substantial impact. 3. Build executive confidence in your online strategy with clear financial expectations and outcomes. With an integrated, well thought-through strategy, and the measurement of analytics to determine the financial outcomes, you will build confidence in your executives and gain support to approve and execute your online marketing plan. I welcome your comments and feedback below: